


Live in Me, Jerusalem

by matan4il



Series: Jerusalem Bells Are Ringing (Jewish!Buck 'verse) [3]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Catholic Character, Catholic Eddie, Catholic!Eddie, Jewish Buck, Jewish Character, Jewish!Buck, M/M, spring mikveh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26011420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/pseuds/matan4il
Summary: He’s so free and in his element here. Eddie has heard from his boyfriend that Buck has been to this spring many times before, but it only now registers how at home he feels in this place.“Thank you for bringing me here,” Eddie says and he didn’t mean to sound sentimental, but there it is, nonetheless.OrSecond installment of the Jewish!Buck 'verse. Buck shares one of his personal customs with Eddie.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Jerusalem Bells Are Ringing (Jewish!Buck 'verse) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879417
Comments: 48
Kudos: 115





	Live in Me, Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the17stairs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the17stairs/gifts).



> Thank you so much to the lovely [Toughpaperround](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToughPaperRound/pseuds/ToughPaperRound) and [Lana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DLanaDHZ/pseuds/DLanaDHZ) for the beta'ing, to the wonderful [Nilshki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilshki/pseuds/nilshki) for the support and to the incredible [the17stairs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the17stairs/profile/) for making this whole AU happen in the first place. Lastly, huge thank you to the insanely talented [Auddieliz09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auddieliz09/pseuds/Auddieliz09) for the fan art!
> 
> You're always welcome to come ask questions, suggest prompts and give feedback at [my Tumblr](https://matan4il.tumblr.com/).

  
  


Eddie’s folding the outfit he just took off neatly into one pile, unlike Buck who just tossed everything he was wearing down to the ground and ran straight into the water.

“None of this is comfortable, you know,” Eddie shouts after him, but he doubts that his complaint is making the impression it should. 

“Who said this was supposed to be comfortable?” 

“If it wasn’t, you could have warned me before,” he starts making his way barefoot, cursing as his feet are pricked repeatedly by little stones sticking out of the dirt. How in the world did Buck just run through this like it’s nothing? That man is a savage who somehow figured out how to fool civilization through the wearing of clothes, or he has done this often enough that his feet have genuinely lost all sensation. 

“Would you have stayed home if I did?” 

“Probably not,” Eddie agrees, “but at least I would have brought flip flops with me. We are going to get so dirty coming out of there..." His annoyance should have grown at the sight of Buck smiling widely at him, utterly unapologetic. But instead it does that thing where it melts completely and only the veneer of it is left behind, to keep Buck from grasping how easily he can grin it away. 

“A bit of dirt to help us bring the memories back home with us,” that’s all Eddie gets in place of remorse, together with an almost flirty wink. 

“I’m pretty sure I won’t need any grime to remember this,” he says, unable to stop a bit of awe from entering his voice as he takes in his surroundings. The spring is small, but almost everything about it and the small pool that it forms is natural, at this little spot out of the way, up in the mountains. They had to drive a bit out of Los Angeles to get to it and the view alone is spectacular. Not that he’d say anything like that out loud. Buck will make a joke about himself being the real view. Which is true as well, but no need to let him gloat. Eddie takes a second to enjoy the sight of the man he loves as he splashes around joyously in the water. “Are you sure that’s how it’s supposed to go, is this rabbi approved?” 

“It’s Buck approved, that’s good enough. Will you come in already?” With that, Eddie gets water sprayed at him as well. Not much, but enough to make it obvious that the water is as cold as he’s been afraid it would be. On the other hand, standing outside, naked as a baby - maybe even worse, since babies aren’t very aware of their own nudity - is cold, but it makes him feel too exposed as well. In the meanwhile, Buck’s body is covered by the water’s opaque turquoise and even though they’ve seen each other nude enough times already, there is something uneasy about this imbalance between them right now. Eddie’s vulnerable like this to any judging gaze, much as he’s sure Buck wouldn’t be, and that’s enough to drive him inside despite the looming threat of the pool’s low temperatures. 

There are no stairs carved into the rocks surrounding the pool, to lead visitors safely and gradually inside, but there is one spot where the stones recede. Instead of them, the ground slopes into the spring’s pool and Eddie walks over there, finding as he steps in that the angle of the dirt beneath his feet changes and the ground drops sharply once he’s in the water, bringing him to stand in it at shoulder height much faster than he expected. 

“See? It’s not that bad, right?” Buck teases him as he comes close. 

He’s so free and in his element here. Eddie has heard from his boyfriend that Buck has been to this spring many times before, but it only now registers how at home he feels in this place. 

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Eddie says and he didn’t mean to sound sentimental, but there it is, nonetheless. 

Because he loves every instance when Buck opens up to him and shows him the parts of himself that no one else gets to see. There’s an air about his lover, of sincerity and carefreeness, of something youthful and unrestrained that makes people think they’re familiar with Buck right away. They judge him easily and place him in simplistic boxes, missing out on a lot of who he truly is, beautiful and complex. Vulnerable and real. A lot of what they see is the armor that Buck wears, more sophisticated than the one Eddie has, in a sense. Because with the latter, everyone can tell that they’re talking to a reticent man and it too often makes them curious and want to dig in, which is exactly the opposite of what putting up barriers is meant to achieve. Eddie hates that reaction. Buck’s walls work better, because they keep people out while fooling them into thinking that they’ve peeked inside and have seen all there is to, stopping them from further inspection. 

And Eddie? He gets to be the lucky one, the exception to the rule, the one person allowed in. 

Buck looks at him like he can read all of those thoughts and kisses Eddie insistently, to steal him away from them, demanding that he be present and fully attentive to their mouths fitting together. It’s easy to surrender to that kind of passion. Eddie has never felt more wanted than in this relationship, especially whenever Buck lets him a step further in. Which he has done, repeatedly and consistently, ever since he confided in Eddie about being Jewish and about the bullying he went through as a kid. 

“What was really bad about it wasn’t the beating or the hatred,” he confessed one late night, when they were laying in bed together, spent after sex. He was tired, his eyes were closing and everything that he said was coming out mumbled, but Eddie was tracking it all and committing it to memory. What the man he’s so deeply in love with had to deal with and how, in overcoming it, he became the person he is today. “It was being scared that they somehow saw something in me that I didn’t. Something that justified their hatred and violence. Like maybe I was a monster and they figured it out before I did.” 

Eddie kissed Buck’s temple, as if that could get to the kid that his boyfriend used to be, make him see how wrong those bullies were. “How did you ignore them?” 

“I didn’t. Not for a while. Then I realized one day that if they were right and I was terrible because I was Jewish, then so was Maddie. And she was always the kindest and most caring person I knew. So they had to be wrong.” 

That’s a part of how they have come to share themselves with each other. And that’s how they ended up coming to this place. When they were simply colleagues, Eddie had no idea that Buck came up here a few times a year in order to do… 

“A teh-what now?” 

“I do a tevilah. It’s okay, you don’t have to try and pronounce it. You can just call it dipping.” 

Eddie poked his partner in the ribs for that one. Buck has been picking up some Spanish, mostly from Abuela. He didn’t have to and he certainly didn’t always get the pronunciation right, but it was still pretty lovely to listen to him try. Eddie wouldn’t settle for anything less himself. 

“Break it down into syllables for me instead of being patronizing, will you?” 

It wasn’t what Buck was doing, Eddie was well aware, but it was a good way to get some cooperation out of his boyfriend. 

“Teh-vee-luh.” 

“A dipping to purify your soul?” 

“Yep. It has to be with naturally in-flowing water, you can go to a mikveh for that, but I found this spring up in the mountains during one hike and I prefer it.” 

And that was that, it was somehow clear without even talking about it much that Eddie would be joining the next time Buck went. 

Eddie pulls away from the kiss. “Well? I’ve been waiting to see this famous tevilah for so long, don’t keep me in suspense.” 

Buck smiles when he hears the Hebrew word and his eyes light up. It’s like the blue in them is shining and making everything around it brighter as well. 

He takes a step back and keeps their eyes locked together. “Lev tahor bara elohim li,” he recites. _A pure heart has God created for me_. “Ve’ruach nachon, chadash be’kirbi.” _And a new, willing spirit within me_. Eddie’s listening to the blessing that Buck’s ancestors have been uttering for millennia, since the day of the Temple in Jerusalem and earlier. He watches as Buck closes his eyes and lets go, allowing his body to slide vertically down and the water to cover his body, then his head until there’s no sign of him. Just when Buck emerges again, gasping for air, Eddie considers his own family’s traditions and how every baby they’ve had going back for decades has been baptized. Buck plunges in again and it makes Eddie think of the old pictures in his mom’s photo album of his own baptism. Third dive in and he’s reminded of Christopher’s tiny white gown, his clenched eyes making his expression somber as the priest let the drops fall one by one on his forehead. The announcement of his name, followed by, “Te bautizo en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo”, was more than as if Chris was found in the water, it was like Eddie was as well, sure for the first time of what his role in this life was. 

He’s a little dizzy with the weight of memories and the passage of years, the things he did not yet understand at his son’s baptism and the lessons he has learned since. How far he has come. He leans sideways against one of the pool’s rocky walls, waiting for the spell to pass and for the world to stabilize around him. Almost instantly, his boyfriend is by his side, worried. 

“Eds, are you okay?” Buck asks. 

The way his pupils dart from one side to the other and his hand locks around Eddie’s wrist, it’s easy to tell that he’s checking for vitals. 

“I’m fine, I…” A long pause follows, because the dizziness is gone and in its wake, there’s only a swirl of want left in the pit of Eddie’s stomach, yet there are things that he’s still struggling to ask for. He’d looked at boys before Buck, but that was before Shannon, too. And their son. He was so young back then, it never amounted to much. Especially not since, as a good Catholic boy, he wasn’t supposed to even entertain those thoughts. He turned to a far less observant and restrictive view of Catholicism long ago, but these footprints in the sands of his mind weren’t easily washed away. What imprinted them even deeper were his father’s ideas of what men are supposed to be like. 

Kissing Buck for the first time was, therefore, an act of rebellion. It had to be. Eddie wasn’t trying to spite anyone, he was simply following his heart, which led him straight to that set of beautiful, vibrant lips and tasting them like a man parched. But a second before, he had to carry out his own little revolt against the voices in his head, telling him that he’ll be dooming himself the second he initiates a kiss with another guy. 

In a sense, they were right. He found heaven in Buck’s eyes, in the inviting softness of his lips, and he sealed his own fate that day. It never bothered him, because before he even took the first step, he had the serene certainty that this was going to be a mutual bonding. He didn’t need Buck’s confession of feelings. The way his best friend was there for him, cared for Chris together with him and looked at him was more than enough to reveal the likely reaction to Eddie’s daring. 

What he discovered was that it’s not a one time thing. Much like subsequently coming out to people in his life as bisexual, it was something he had to keep doing, this private uprising against every voice in his head telling him that being with Buck is wrong. 

It got worse when he realized what he wanted in bed, because once again, it’s exactly what he’s not supposed to. But there’s something so quietly, magnificently brave about his lover opening up to Eddie, exposing all vulnerabilities. It makes him want to do the same, be courageous in overcoming his own inhibitions, get past the fears of whether it would hurt or what it might mean about him, and lay the old demons to rest one night at a time until they won’t wake up anymore. 

But he still hesitates whenever he has to vocalize his desire. As a compromise, he reclines further back against the stone wall and juts his chin out defiantly. “I just want you,” he says and trusts Buck to get the rest. 

He does, closing the gap between them and then further, yet gently, crowding them both into the stone wall, hands sliding over the curves of Eddie’s butt, arms wrapping around his waist. More and more of their skin comes into contact, more flesh rubbing into flesh, until there’s only one point where they’re still disconnected. Buck’s lips are hovering over Eddie’s, teasingly and affectionately bumping the tips of their noses together without taking the final step. 

“Didn’t you say something,” Eddie huffs out at the growing frustration building inside him, “about how, in Judaism, sex is a mitzvah, a fucking religious commandment?” 

Buck, that fucking bastard, his erection pressing in, just laughs without moving his tempting mouth even half an inch closer. “A celebration of God’s creation in all its glory, yes.” 

“Then by that logic, shouldn’t cock teasing be a mortal sin?” 

Even more laughter is all Eddie gets in return. “Well... Maybe not mortal…” 

“Just shut up and fuck me already,” he doesn’t whine, he distinctly doesn’t. But he may be on the verge of the capacity for it and maybe that’s why he’s bold enough to be demanding and specific in a way he usually isn’t, not even in the privacy of his own mind. 

“I love you,” Buck says, suddenly all serious as he moves Eddie’s thighs underwater, slots them around his own waist and, with the same motion, fits their lips together. Finally. No more space between their bodies and the heat they generate when they’re in full contact with each other is building exponentially even in the cold water. 

Eddie raises his arms as the passion in their kiss rises as well. He holds onto Buck, not just physically, but also to the way his eyes looked when he said those words. They’ve exchanged them before, but in this water, with the significance of the act Buck comes here for, they reach a more profound meaning and a deeper level in Eddie’s soul. He wants to say it back and he does, with his body, letting it open up to Buck’s tongue and finger. 

The water splashes around them, caresses the lower parts of their bodies which are sunk in it, trails down in droplets over the skin outside. It plays on their senses while their kiss deepens, as does Buck’s breach of Eddie’s entrance. Another finger is added in and despite all of the carefulness, it stings. This is one thing that he used to be afraid of, the physical pain. And there always is some, but he’s not scared about it anymore. It will make way for more pleasant sensations, but more than that, Eddie finds that there’s room for overcoming the discomfort that suits him. He does it for Buck. His own silent declaration of love. 

Buck pulls back from their kiss so he can replace his fingers with his cock. It’s a push, the water makes entry easier, but not like lube would have, so he goes slowly, leans their foreheads together, some balance to the effort of going ever so slow. Eddie grabs onto the wet strands of hair at the nape of his lover’s neck. He’s not quite pulling, more holding on to his own anchor through this. As soon as Buck’s inside, his lips are back on skin, mouthing down a jawline, chasing the play of water drops. Eddie stretches his neck in an invitation, feeling weightless, supported fully between the water, the stone wall and his boyfriend holding him up, crushing into him, beginning to thrust slowly, in and out. 

It suddenly dawns on him that Buck is mumbling something against his wet skin, in between kissing and sucking. Eddie’s straining his ears to catch it, tries to decipher it through the touch of lip movement no less than through sounds. It seems to be Hebrew and with a bit of effort, he can make it out. One verse, over and over again, hushed and broken, planted reverently down the side of his neck, along the lines between his shoulders and clavicles. “Maim rabim lo iuchlu le’chabot et ha’ahava,” _many waters cannot extinguish love_ , “u’neharot lo ishtefuha,” _and rivers cannot wash it away_. 

He’s heard the Hebrew verse before, Buck likes reading out the Song of Songs to him in its original language, but never like this, seared into his own flesh with the scorching breath of his partner, etched between water drops with adoration that he’s unraveled by every time Buck rolls his hips. 

Eddie's cock is nestled between them. It gets a good rub whenever either one moves, though that's not really a concern right now. Buck will see them both to an orgasm. That's not even a question. So Eddie lets go and doesn't chase after it. He's not seeking anything. He simply exists in Buck's arms, in the play of water between his own lips and his boyfriend's warm skin, between nature, their intimate act and the sense of the divine surrounding them that Eddie's mind gradually starts grasping. Sure, some people find a higher power in the explosive ecstasy of climax, but at this moment, he experiences it in this perfect serenity, surrounded by the man he loves, the natural beauty of God’s creation that Buck talks about often and this deeper awareness that permeates and is reflected by everything around them. It’s present, but never explicitly revealed. Here, of all places, away from church, without clergy and ceremonies, in the embrace of a man from a different religion and in the middle of slow and sensual lovemaking. It wouldn't have made sense to Eddie before, but it does right now. God works in mysterious ways.

**Author's Note:**

> Title of this fic is from Andrew Lloyd Weber's _The Temple_.


End file.
